Christine König Galerie is pleased to present I remember Clifford, still, Stanley Whitney’s 3rd solo show in the gallery, first introduced by David Hammons in the course of the exhibition Quiet As It's Kept in 2002. The title of his new show and the painting I remember Clifford, still refer to the American abstract expressionist Clyfford Still, as well as to the jazz trumpeter Clifford Brown, who died in a car accident at the age of 25 in 1955. Benny Golson composed the jazz standard I Remember Clifford to honour his memory.

In the work of Stanley Whitney, color and structure, two fundamental aspects of abstract painting, become color as structure. Blocks of green, yellow, light and dark red, orange and blue, line up and pack together, at times slightly overlapping, while piling up in four or five vertical levels. Horizontal lines run between one row and another, uniting, dividing, as well as serving other, more mysterious functions. In the lower levels the blocks, square or rectangular, are usually smaller: they seem to have settled, crushed under the weight of the others, as happens in the deep geological layers of the earth. The square becomes the quintessence of the work, a founding-archetypal biology, an immediate and concrete contribution to a concept of pure visibility.

Where color and movement are concerned, Whitney’s visual „call-and-response“ has a musical counterpoint. The colors create rhythm and thus sound: counterpoint, cadences both regular and syncopated, related to jazz. Whitney arrives at a synthesis of dissonance and harmony without ever repeating himself, creating a visual polyrhythm.Bob Nickas, Annemarie Sauzeau